Coots cute eggs… breeding time for Coots..

The Red-knobbed Coot (Fulica cristata)

A noisy bird, an aggressive bird, it is likely to bully any intruder, even large birds such as Egyptian geese. It can be seen swimming on open water or walking across waterside grasslands. It is an aggressive species, and strongly territorial during the breeding season.

But what I hate about this bird – and I don’t hate many – its behaviour towards its own young is so aggressive, that only a few are likely to survive to adulthood.

I took a few photos of the birds with their young, lucky for them too far away to even throw a stone at them. They chase them, peck at their heads, how any parent can behave such towards its own young amazes me. Actually I hate this bird because of that. I accept that in certain species the young will fight in the nest till one is killed and then the other gets all the food. Natures survival of the strongest… but this is a parent against its own offspring….

I spoke to a pigeon about this and it informed me it closes its eye to such bad behaviour…

It also said the other alternate is to look the other way….

But as it looked down there was a Coot nesting below …

Were there eggs, would any of these survive??? I will be watching to see what happens…

Life’s little hic ups….

Is it not strange how life can have so many twists and turns or ups and downs? The ups and downs seem to follow one another faster than traveling down a dirt road that is badly corrugated. The twists and turns seem to keep us from ever seeing the proverbial “end of the tunnel.”

At what stage of life does one say “Whooo enough is enough.” Or are we just expected to keep on persevering in the hope that life will eventually happen?

In my younger days life just seemed so much easier, less complicated, rushed, or for that matter, I seemed to have less worries. As age has caught up, so have the gremlins that now place me in a science fiction story I don’t want, or seem to be able to get out of.

Health, wealth and happiness, something we all strive to achieve, will evade most and only favour the few, certainly not the majority. Once over 50, you are definitely heading towards the end, certainly few can expect this to be the middle of their lives. Yet none ever seem to give up and say “This is it, let me now sit back and await the inevitable.”

This makes me think. The world is turning from the old and experienced, towards the young that have the theoretical knowledge, those able to make a good argument or presentation of their expected results. Is this what we can expect to increase in years to come?

When my children were young, there was hardly even talk of computers. Or suffice it to say they were on the larger side, so large they had their own dedicated room. Today we sit with laptops that are carried around like ladies hand bags, we have the tablets and mini tablets that seemed to adorn the hands of most you see walking the streets. Hell the cell phones that progressed from a “brick” to the competition for “who’s is smaller than who’s.” Now, it’s what the hell, it’s no longer a cell phone, but a computer I put to my ear on the odd occasion to make a phone call.

Yet it seems this very progress is what is making the old, their experience and knowledge gained from the university of hard knocks, redundant. Well good luck to the young of today, those that still have a long life with their parents. Those that must still leave home and search for “health, wealth and happiness.” Life might just find you redundant before what is better known as midlife.

Now I’ve wasted most of your time, in fact I lost most of you on the way. A rant or rave on the inequities of life is not what most blog for. Certainly not what most want to read. So for those of you who have politely staggered through the muddy mire of my mind this day, here are a few photos my grandson took of a hooded vulture…

Maybe this is the future of my postings, have I reached that mile stone where one says “enough is enough…”?? mmm… something I need to contemplate ….